Q: How did you come up with
your main character, Logan, and why did you decide to write from a male
perspective?

A: Logan—or really, the
book’s narrative voice—was the product of a long, non-linear process. He first
appeared in a 12-page short story I wrote in graduate school, around 2001.

The story, which I wrote in
the third person, involved a father who, after learning of his wife’s
infidelity, takes off with their young son. The pair lands at a seedy motel,
where they swim in a hot-springs pool, and after some reconsideration on Logan’s
part, head home.

Over the years that followed,
I rewrote the story many times, from different characters’ points of view. With
each rewrite, the story expanded. The characters took on more depth, the story more
complications and subplots, and I experimented with different tones and points
of view.

In late 2009 I started
writing from Logan’s point of view in the first-person, present tense, and that
felt like a breakthrough. In his voice, the story took on new energy, and I ran
with that. I kept running—or writing—for almost a year, until the first draft
was done.

For me, the excitement of
fiction, as both reader and writer, comes from seeing the world through the
eyes of people who aren’t me, and I decided to write from Logan’s—a
man’s—perspective for precisely that reason; telling the story in his voice
felt exciting, like I was constantly making discoveries.

If I got stuck, I focused on
the things Logan and I had in common (i.e. a bungalow house, a dog, a somewhat
cranky nature) instead of the things we didn’t (almost everything else). It was
actually quite fun.

Q: Your website describes
Brand New Human Being as being in part about "the road from child to
parent," and father-son relationships play a big role in this book. How
does the dynamic between Logan and his father, Gus, affect Logan's relationship
with his young son, Owen?

A: You’ve basically put your
finger on the book’s central theme. Logan—like each of us—is shaped by his childhood,
which in his case was dominated by his father, a man he revered, loved, and
resented at the same time.

When Gus is taken away, it’s
as if his operating system suddenly fails. Not only is he left with no one to
revere, he has no one to resent, and he sort of goes haywire. He’s so confused
about his father that he’s having trouble being a father himself.

I’m so fascinated by how our
parents influence us, consciously and un-, and in what we bring to bear on our
children, in turn. How this inevitable—and sometimes deeply unhealthy—cycle
continues, shaping people’s psyches and their lives, generation after
generation. It’s kind of mind-blowing, when you think about it.

Q: Why did you choose Brand
New Human Being as the book's title?

A: Actually, I didn’t. The
original title was Gold, but my agent thought that didn’t give enough of an
idea of what the book was, so after some brainstorming, we sold it as After
Augustus.

Then, as the cover was being
developed, there were some concerns about how that title would work with the
images they wanted, so we went back to the drawing board, and someone at HMH
suggested Brand New Human Being, taken from a line from the book in which Logan
is thinking about the randomness of Owen’s conception—of all life, I guess.

Over the course of the novel
though, and certainly by the end, the central “brand new human being” is Logan.
Or so we hope.

Q: What have readers'
reactions been to Logan and his wife, Julie? Have people tended to sympathize
with one more than the other?

A: Reactions have been all
over the map. That’s a really fun part of having written a novel—hearing how
people respond to people you made up.

Generally I’d say Julie takes
the most heat. People seem to have very little sympathy for her—interestingly, women
in particular. At the same time, though, I’ve had lots of women tell me they fear
they are exactly like her. She’s a controversial figure I guess; at one book
club I visited, I actually thought it might come to blows.

I’ve heard mixed reactions to
Logan, too: everything from, “I couldn’t believe what a terrible father he is,”
to “I kept thinking, I am him.” After first reading the manuscript, my agent
wrote, “I'd want to pummel Logan and then I'd want to offer him a
consoling hug.” I think that about sums it up.

Q: What are you working on
now?

A: Another novel, populated
with characters likely to be just as polarizing, and maybe even more so.

These are not model parents
or children or husbands or wives or friends; despite good intentions, they’re
limited—by their biases, by their insecurities, by their desires, by their own
upbringings—as we all are, I believe. So they make poor decisions, and sometimes
they behave abominably. These are my people, both in the flesh and on the page.

About Me

Author, THE PRESIDENT AND ME: GEORGE WASHINGTON AND THE MAGIC HAT, new children's book (Schiffer, 2016). Co-author, with Marvin Kalb, of HAUNTING LEGACY: VIETNAM AND THE AMERICAN PRESIDENCY FROM FORD TO OBAMA (Brookings Institution Press, 2011).